Did they say they were ceasing operations? I didn't read that. I only read they were changing their structure to become a non- profit, and asking members to step up and help donate some of their time. I don't think we would see any changes, other than it may take longer to get help, or some of us would need to offer to volunteer help.
On Wednesday, August 3, 2022, 8:08 AM, Margaret Wentworth via bivio.com <user*25964300001@bivio.com> wrote:
Hi Ya'll,
My club has been with Bivio since they had an exhibition at the Money Show in Orlando at least 20 years ago. I was using NAIC computer-based accounting when I took the Bivio trial. When my computer crashed, I lost all the NAIC data but had the Bivio account on the web that I had copied data into just a few months before! Saved my bacon, big time!!
If Bivio were to cease doing our accounting, my club would have to disband after 24 years. As treasurer, I could not figure things out alone.
To my mind, the most important functions are the computation of units and the federal and state tax reporting. Synching to the broker is a great reminder and helps not to miss things, but I can do that myself with the brokerage reports.
My suggestions are these and I believe my members would support these:
Raise the price for basic service at least double.
Charge an extra fee for doing state taxes. Not every club has state reporting and why should those clubs who do not have a state reporting requirement support those of us who do.
Run your numbers and see if those increases make Bivio a viable business.
At last resort, sell Bivio to another accounting firm doing online taxes which guarantees that they will continue the current service.
I have contacted my Congressman to tell him about the onerous tax reporting added with the 2017 tax reform. I am asking him to see what he can do about exempting investment clubs from this requirement. I suggest you all do the same. Perhaps we can simplify things for us and for Bivio going forward.
Please give us all a heads up if this irreplaceable service is being discontinued. I shudder to hear that news.
Rob as long time treasurer until dissolution I loved bivio, the user friendliness of the interface, the easy to understand reports, this forum. But I cannot see a way clear to a non profit status, agreeing w all points already stated. I also cannot foresee a path where I can persuade my club members (I am not treasurer of my new club) to switch from my Iclub (where I had been persuading them to do so) for a "similar" product (when I air quote similar I mean superior in my eyes but similar in theirs) which does the same service but for twice the price. I chose bivio for three clubs I was involved in as Treasurer so I get the value and specialness on so many levels, but I do not think I could persuade 8 frugal women to pay more. Reality bites!!
A board of 12 people making it work a la REI... can't see it.
Finally, as much as it pains me to write this, perhaps another options is to explore talks w my club for an acquisition/merger.
Between some brokerages not accepting new investment club partnerships and bivio's situation as described, I fear for the continued existence of small investment clubs as an education and investing vehicle.
I am also in agreement with the opinions below. I agree Bivio is underpriced and if Bivio raises the annual fee, our club would pay them.
I was our club treasurer for over 25 years. Before Bivio, I kept our accounting data on Excel spreadsheets which worked fairly well but taxes were a different story. Manually completing federal taxes and taxes for 2 states was a HUGE effort until Bivio came along. Taxes are much easier with your software.
We're good with a price increase and stay the same company you are today.
I share Dr. Dave's thoughts about moving to a NFP model and pricing based on AUM.
bivio is vital to investment club operations and without its service I'm certain our club would fold. I would not want the cost of the service to price a new club from forming or cause our partnership to disband. I don't know what an "equitable" AUM fee structure would look like but our accounting fees are our only major expense. "Equitable" requires that bivio be financially viable and secure to continue providing its services and support, that its staff be paid the professional wages they deserve, and that the principals receive a return on their investment and efforts.
I am unconvinced that making Bivio into a non-profit would actually solve the stated problem. Rather it might hasten the end of Bivio. It seems clear to me that Bivio is much appreciated by the users as-is. For sure.
It might be a good path to think about the many ways to monetize 1600 investment clubs each with a daily update from their brokers.
Among other ideas; how about for a fee, allowing customers to see what the top clubs are holding & their trades. Clubs that would rather remain anonymous could opt to keep their names private. This sort of data could become a never-ending source of marketable services.
Another idea: Perhaps there could be Bivio price tiers based on AUM, or number of members, or based on % returns, or some combination of that.
Knowing what I know now, I would not agree to be treasurer of any investment club without Bivio. If Bivio discontinues, I will fold our club rather than try to do what Bivio does for us. On the flip side consider that small clubs already pay a higher cost per member for Bivio. Bivio is obviously a very valuable service, but small clubs, or clubs with less $ in play can only pay so much before getting priced out.
I'm personally OK with printing & filing paper taxes rather than e-filing, but that could be another possible revenue producing add-on service.
Bivio has been a wonderful help to our club - it has made my job as treasurer appear easy to my members. The one additional item that would be very helpful is e-filing of taxes (federal and state). It has
become increasingly difficult to do paper filing with the increase in the number of pages to print and the difficulty making sure stuff gets to the IRS. I'd rather pay Bivio more than paying fedex or USPS to ensure paper delivery.
Prior to using Bivio our club used multiple spreadsheets to do our accounting. It was set up years before using Lotus 123 by one member who was a CPA. I took over from him and used his system for about two
years. It worked but it took about 4 hours a month to maintain the records. I am also a CPA with over 40 years of experience. I LOVE BIVIO! I agree that it is worth much more than is currently being charged. If the price goes up I will still recommend that
Bivio is the right thing for our club.
I agree with John that Bivio is indispensable to our club and the fees are too low. Doubling the price would still make it viable for us and provide cushion to those managing it. I have some of the same concerns
over distributed management mentioned earlier.
Please keep up the service; we rely on you all!
Regards,
Robin
Diamonds & Dividends
Helen Keller was once asked if there was anything that could have been worse than losing her sight. Keller replied: "Yes, I could have lost my vision."
Bob... I never gave thought to bivio's corporate finances and clearly, there's not enough revenue to support the expanding service requirements. But I don;t see how becoming a NFP would solve the revenue
problem. I can't imagine that donations would come pouring in to support a service that essentially enables for profit partnerships to manage their operations. My thought is that the revenue model needs to change and that the annual subscription price needs
to at least double. It doesn't matter to me whether bivio is a NFP or privately owned. What I care about is that the accounting software meets our partner's needs and generates our annual tax filings. I think the service is worth much more than the current
cost. bivio's software replaces countless hours of our manual labor and accounting and tax expertise for each member club. Our partnership is entirely dependent on your software and would fold without it. Our partnership is indebted to bivio and its service;
I think its subscription cost is underpriced. These thoughts don't address your question, but bottom line for me is I need bivio's service and I fear that geographically distributed management would place the service in jeopardy and not solve the fundamental
issue of insufficient revenue.
John Munn
On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
Hi All,
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason.
Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software
consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex.
Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data
providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member
events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say
in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories).
As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with
our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing
board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running
the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's
operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Edward Kennedy on
I would support not for profit, but more importantly I am willing to have your fees raised substantially.
Our club has average value of $15,000 for 27 relatively prosperous members.
I like the software and service.
On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
Hi All,
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
MARY FRAN NOVAK on
Hi Everyone.,
I agree w/all the comments. I
I'Ve been w/Bivio since the beginning. I could/would not do treasurer duties without them. Double the price. But don't stop doing what you are doing
My club has been with Bivio since they had an exhibition at the Money Show in Orlando at least 20 years ago. I was using NAIC computer-based accounting when I took the Bivio trial. When my computer crashed, I lost all the NAIC data but had the Bivio account on the web that I had copied data into just a few months before! Saved my bacon, big time!!
If Bivio were to cease doing our accounting, my club would have to disband after 24 years. As treasurer, I could not figure things out alone.
To my mind, the most important functions are the computation of units and the federal and state tax reporting. Synching to the broker is a great reminder and helps not to miss things, but I can do that myself with the brokerage reports.
My suggestions are these and I believe my members would support these:
Raise the price for basic service at least double.
Charge an extra fee for doing state taxes. Not every club has state reporting and why should those clubs who do not have a state reporting requirement support those of us who do.
Run your numbers and see if those increases make Bivio a viable business.
At last resort, sell Bivio to another accounting firm doing online taxes which guarantees that they will continue the current service.
I have contacted my Congressman to tell him about the onerous tax reporting added with the 2017 tax reform. I am asking him to see what he can do about exempting investment clubs from this requirement. I suggest you all do the same. Perhaps we can simplify things for us and for Bivio going forward.
Please give us all a heads up if this irreplaceable service is being discontinued. I shudder to hear that news.
Rob as long time treasurer until dissolution I loved bivio, the user friendliness of the interface, the easy to understand reports, this forum. But I cannot see a way clear to a non profit status, agreeing w all points already stated. I also cannot foresee a path where I can persuade my club members (I am not treasurer of my new club) to switch from my Iclub (where I had been persuading them to do so) for a "similar" product (when I air quote similar I mean superior in my eyes but similar in theirs) which does the same service but for twice the price. I chose bivio for three clubs I was involved in as Treasurer so I get the value and specialness on so many levels, but I do not think I could persuade 8 frugal women to pay more. Reality bites!!
A board of 12 people making it work a la REI... can't see it.
Finally, as much as it pains me to write this, perhaps another options is to explore talks w my club for an acquisition/merger.
Between some brokerages not accepting new investment club partnerships and bivio's situation as described, I fear for the continued existence of small investment clubs as an education and investing vehicle.
I am also in agreement with the opinions below. I agree Bivio is underpriced and if Bivio raises the annual fee, our club would pay them.
I was our club treasurer for over 25 years. Before Bivio, I kept our accounting data on Excel spreadsheets which worked fairly well but taxes were a different story. Manually completing federal taxes and taxes for 2 states was a HUGE effort until Bivio came along. Taxes are much easier with your software.
We're good with a price increase and stay the same company you are today.
I share Dr. Dave's thoughts about moving to a NFP model and pricing based on AUM.
bivio is vital to investment club operations and without its service I'm certain our club would fold. I would not want the cost of the service to price a new club from forming or cause our partnership to disband. I don't know what an "equitable" AUM fee structure would look like but our accounting fees are our only major expense. "Equitable" requires that bivio be financially viable and secure to continue providing its services and support, that its staff be paid the professional wages they deserve, and that the principals receive a return on their investment and efforts.
I am unconvinced that making Bivio into a non-profit would actually solve the stated problem. Rather it might hasten the end of Bivio. It seems clear to me that Bivio is much appreciated by the users as-is. For sure.
It might be a good path to think about the many ways to monetize 1600 investment clubs each with a daily update from their brokers.
Among other ideas; how about for a fee, allowing customers to see what the top clubs are holding & their trades. Clubs that would rather remain anonymous could opt to keep their names private. This sort of data could become a never-ending source of marketable services.
Another idea: Perhaps there could be Bivio price tiers based on AUM, or number of members, or based on % returns, or some combination of that.
Knowing what I know now, I would not agree to be treasurer of any investment club without Bivio. If Bivio discontinues, I will fold our club rather than try to do what Bivio does for us. On the flip side consider that small clubs already pay a higher cost per member for Bivio. Bivio is obviously a very valuable service, but small clubs, or clubs with less $ in play can only pay so much before getting priced out.
I'm personally OK with printing & filing paper taxes rather than e-filing, but that could be another possible revenue producing add-on service.
Bivio has been a wonderful help to our club - it has made my job as treasurer appear easy to my members. The one additional item that would be very helpful is e-filing of taxes (federal and state). It has
become increasingly difficult to do paper filing with the increase in the number of pages to print and the difficulty making sure stuff gets to the IRS. I'd rather pay Bivio more than paying fedex or USPS to ensure paper delivery.
Prior to using Bivio our club used multiple spreadsheets to do our accounting. It was set up years before using Lotus 123 by one member who was a CPA. I took over from him and used his system for about two
years. It worked but it took about 4 hours a month to maintain the records. I am also a CPA with over 40 years of experience. I LOVE BIVIO! I agree that it is worth much more than is currently being charged. If the price goes up I will still recommend that
Bivio is the right thing for our club.
I agree with John that Bivio is indispensable to our club and the fees are too low. Doubling the price would still make it viable for us and provide cushion to those managing it. I have some of the same concerns
over distributed management mentioned earlier.
Please keep up the service; we rely on you all!
Regards,
Robin
Diamonds & Dividends
Helen Keller was once asked if there was anything that could have been worse than losing her sight. Keller replied: "Yes, I could have lost my vision."
Bob... I never gave thought to bivio's corporate finances and clearly, there's not enough revenue to support the expanding service requirements. But I don;t see how becoming a NFP would solve the revenue
problem. I can't imagine that donations would come pouring in to support a service that essentially enables for profit partnerships to manage their operations. My thought is that the revenue model needs to change and that the annual subscription price needs
to at least double. It doesn't matter to me whether bivio is a NFP or privately owned. What I care about is that the accounting software meets our partner's needs and generates our annual tax filings. I think the service is worth much more than the current
cost. bivio's software replaces countless hours of our manual labor and accounting and tax expertise for each member club. Our partnership is entirely dependent on your software and would fold without it. Our partnership is indebted to bivio and its service;
I think its subscription cost is underpriced. These thoughts don't address your question, but bottom line for me is I need bivio's service and I fear that geographically distributed management would place the service in jeopardy and not solve the fundamental
issue of insufficient revenue.
John Munn
On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
Hi All,
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason.
Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software
consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex.
Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data
providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member
events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say
in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories).
As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with
our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing
board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running
the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's
operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Edward Kennedy on
Yes, raise the software fee. We are paying 7 times that amount to Better Investing.
As treasurer I provide my services free with no costs for accountant, lawyer etc.
On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
Hi All,
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Lisa Robertson on
I wish to add my voice to those who would be happy to pay double the price to continue with the same service. The scheme you are describing sounds way too complicated to be sustainable. I was the treasurer of a club that existed for seventeen years, and we loved bivio. I am a member of a club now, but not the treasurer. that is also very happy with bivio. Our treasurer has no financial background, but bivio makes it easy for her to do the club's accounting.
Lisa Robertson
VP - Women Earning and Learning
On 08/02/2022 3:50 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
Hi All,
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Peter Dunkelberger on
I empathize with your situation. Cash in has to be more than cash out or you have a problem.
A couple of thoughts on non-profit status. REI is not a non-profit organization. It is a for profit corporation and instead of shareholders it has members. Members receive dividends in exchange for a life-time $20 membership fee. It is basically like Costco--a buyers club, but organized around a for profit concept.
The status you quoted above (501(c)(6) is not a charitable organization status (from the IRS: "Contributions to section 501(c)(6) organizations are not deductible as charitable contributions on the donor's federal income tax return.")
Non-profit status does not even mean that you are necessarily a charitable organization. There are many forms of non-profit organizations, like lobbying groups, swimming clubs, etc. Also, you need a good reason to become non-profit. One has to apply to the IRS for non-profit status, and it might not be granted if your mission is not clear.
Surprisingly enough, Better Investing is a non-profit charitable (501(c)(3) organization.
But I think your cash flow problems will not be solved by a change in corporate status. You need to charge more (and perhaps even do more) to attract more clients. Why does BI charge so much (I think someone wrote 7x what Bivio charges?) and seems to have a very loyal following (perhaps not as loyal as Bivio?). BTW, BI had about $3.3 million in come fo r2020 fiscal year ending 09/30/2020
You must know from your regular jobs how tough this kind of business can be.
I don't want to be discouraging, but the numbers you quoted for cash inflow are obviously insufficient to support the level of services you provide. I am amazed you all have been able to do this for so long.
Peter Dunkelberger
Sumner Stock Selectors Investment Club
On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
Hi All,
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Minh Le on
Thank you Bob for laying out the issues for us. Bivio is very valuable to us. We have been operated our club since 1994 and had used a package software from Better Investing until last year. Since we moved to Bivio, we thought it was a big time saver for us. Big Big Big!
I trust your judgement on the direction you want to continue the service. I want the service to be continued.
Here are some crazy ideas:
1) Raise the price to meet your operating needs.
2) Cut out functions and capabilities that few people use. Or unbundle them and charge a fee for the extra services.
3) Charge a reasonable fees for consulting services.
4) Sell Bivio to a big boy like TDAmeritrade. They might be able to absorb the operating cost of $400k annually, and provide the service for free to their bigger investment clubs.
Minh T. Le
On Aug 3, 2022, at 7:12 PM, Lisa Robertson via bivio.com <user*14356800001@bivio.com> wrote:
I wish to add my voice to those who would be happy to pay double the price to continue with the same service. The scheme you are describing sounds way too complicated to be sustainable. I was the treasurer of a club that existed for seventeen years, and we loved bivio. I am a member of a club now, but not the treasurer. that is also very happy with bivio. Our treasurer has no financial background, but bivio makes it easy for her to do the club's accounting.
Lisa Robertson
VP - Women Earning and Learning
On 08/02/2022 3:50 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
Hi All,
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Carole Jansen on
I agree with everything here, except sale to a firm like TDAmeritrade. I don't want to be made to use a specific broker in order to use their accounting/tax/reporting software. And in particular TD Ameritrade, just as a for instance.
Thank you Bob for laying out the issues for us. Bivio is very valuable to us. We have been operated our club since 1994 and had used a package software from Better Investing until last year. Since we moved to Bivio, we thought it was a big time saver for us. Big Big Big!
I trust your judgement on the direction you want to continue the service. I want the service to be continued.
Here are some crazy ideas:
1) Raise the price to meet your operating needs.
2) Cut out functions and capabilities that few people use. Or unbundle them and charge a fee for the extra services.
3) Charge a reasonable fees for consulting services.
4) Sell Bivio to a big boy like TDAmeritrade. They might be able to absorb the operating cost of $400k annually, and provide the service for free to their bigger investment clubs.
I wish to add my voice to those who would be happy to pay double the price to continue with the same service. The scheme you are describing sounds way too complicated to be sustainable. I was the treasurer of a club that existed for seventeen years, and we loved bivio. I am a member of a club now, but not the treasurer. that is also very happy with bivio. Our treasurer has no financial background, but bivio makes it easy for her to do the club's accounting.
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Minh Le on
Thank you for reading my crazy comments, Carole. Please allow me clarify. It will still be an independent service available to all clubs and any club. Every club will pay to use it. But you know these big guys, they leverage their strengths whenever they can, include giving out something for free, but it is not free.
Minh T. Le
On Aug 3, 2022, at 9:59 PM, Carole Jansen via bivio.com <user*8441200001@bivio.com> wrote:
I agree with everything here, except sale to a firm like TDAmeritrade. I don't want to be made to use a specific broker in order to use their accounting/tax/reporting software. And in particular TD Ameritrade, just as a for instance.
Thank you Bob for laying out the issues for us. Bivio is very valuable to us. We have been operated our club since 1994 and had used a package software from Better Investing until last year. Since we moved to Bivio, we thought it was a big time saver for us. Big Big Big!
I trust your judgement on the direction you want to continue the service. I want the service to be continued.
Here are some crazy ideas:
1) Raise the price to meet your operating needs.
2) Cut out functions and capabilities that few people use. Or unbundle them and charge a fee for the extra services.
3) Charge a reasonable fees for consulting services.
4) Sell Bivio to a big boy like TDAmeritrade. They might be able to absorb the operating cost of $400k annually, and provide the service for free to their bigger investment clubs.
I wish to add my voice to those who would be happy to pay double the price to continue with the same service. The scheme you are describing sounds way too complicated to be sustainable. I was the treasurer of a club that existed for seventeen years, and we loved bivio. I am a member of a club now, but not the treasurer. that is also very happy with bivio. Our treasurer has no financial background, but bivio makes it easy for her to do the club's accounting.
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Minh Le on
Maybe sell to Intuit a tax software. I know some clubs use Intuit Quicken to manage their clubs. It is a lot of work too. This might do it.
Minh T. Le
On Aug 3, 2022, at 10:11 PM, Minh Le <minhtoanle@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you for reading my crazy comments, Carole. Please allow me clarify. It will still be an independent service available to all clubs and any club. Every club will pay to use it. But you know these big guys, they leverage their strengths whenever they can, include giving out something for free, but it is not free.
Minh T. Le
On Aug 3, 2022, at 9:59 PM, Carole Jansen via bivio.com <user*8441200001@bivio.com> wrote:
I agree with everything here, except sale to a firm like TDAmeritrade. I don't want to be made to use a specific broker in order to use their accounting/tax/reporting software. And in particular TD Ameritrade, just as a for instance.
Thank you Bob for laying out the issues for us. Bivio is very valuable to us. We have been operated our club since 1994 and had used a package software from Better Investing until last year. Since we moved to Bivio, we thought it was a big time saver for us. Big Big Big!
I trust your judgement on the direction you want to continue the service. I want the service to be continued.
Here are some crazy ideas:
1) Raise the price to meet your operating needs.
2) Cut out functions and capabilities that few people use. Or unbundle them and charge a fee for the extra services.
3) Charge a reasonable fees for consulting services.
4) Sell Bivio to a big boy like TDAmeritrade. They might be able to absorb the operating cost of $400k annually, and provide the service for free to their bigger investment clubs.
I wish to add my voice to those who would be happy to pay double the price to continue with the same service. The scheme you are describing sounds way too complicated to be sustainable. I was the treasurer of a club that existed for seventeen years, and we loved bivio. I am a member of a club now, but not the treasurer. that is also very happy with bivio. Our treasurer has no financial background, but bivio makes it easy for her to do the club's accounting.
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
Realto Nosky on
I think Peter makes some thoughtful points. I also do not necessarily see a change in structure / status as solving current cash flow issue(s). Although, my knowledge of grants in this area is rather limited, which may provide the much-needed funds.
I am also a CPA. Our club has been with bivio since 2012 and I have served as Treasurer since inception. I believe our club would likely fold quickly in the absence of bivio.
Since our inception in 2012, I can only recall one price increase to our subscription service (I think) and it was a minor increase. This is not realistic for business health in my experience.
If current ownership & leadership are simply looking to transition out of this line of work, is raising your rates for a period of time & then considering a sale an option? Granted, this would not happen quickly, as multiple quarters of financial results would likely be needed to present to a prospective buyer.
Personally, we would not have an issue paying double the rate, even more for the convenience and accuracy bivio provides. Electronic filing options would also increase what we are willing to pay. Charging substantially more will enhance your financial results greatly while still remaining more than competitive with other organizations such as BI. Bivio has room here given the competition to charge what is needed while still providing high value to your clients, keeping this a win-win scenario.
Best wishes,
Rick J. Nosky
On Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 01:58:14 PM EDT, Peter Dunkelberger via bivio.com <user*26984900001@bivio.com> wrote:
I empathize with your situation. Cash in has to be more than cash out or you have a problem.
A couple of thoughts on non-profit status. REI is not a non-profit organization. It is a for profit corporation and instead of shareholders it has members. Members receive dividends in exchange for a life-time $20 membership fee. It is basically like Costco--a buyers club, but organized around a for profit concept.
The status you quoted above (501(c)(6) is not a charitable organization status (from the IRS: "Contributions to section 501(c)(6) organizations are not deductible as charitable contributions on the donor's federal income tax return.")
Non-profit status does not even mean that you are necessarily a charitable organization. There are many forms of non-profit organizations, like lobbying groups, swimming clubs, etc. Also, you need a good reason to become non-profit. One has to apply to the IRS for non-profit status, and it might not be granted if your mission is not clear.
Surprisingly enough, Better Investing is a non-profit charitable (501(c)(3) organization.
But I think your cash flow problems will not be solved by a change in corporate status. You need to charge more (and perhaps even do more) to attract more clients. Why does BI charge so much (I think someone wrote 7x what Bivio charges?) and seems to have a very loyal following (perhaps not as loyal as Bivio?). BTW, BI had about $3.3 million in come fo r2020 fiscal year ending 09/30/2020
You must know from your regular jobs how tough this kind of business can be.
I don't want to be discouraging, but the numbers you quoted for cash inflow are obviously insufficient to support the level of services you provide. I am amazed you all have been able to do this for so long.
Peter Dunkelberger
Sumner Stock Selectors Investment Club
On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
Hi All,
Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.
So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).
Why
When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.
By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.
Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.
Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.
Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.
Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.
Plan
The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.
We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.
We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.
A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.
The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.
The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.
Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.
Feedback
We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.
We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for using Bivio.
Sincerely,
Robert Nagler
CEO
Bivio Inc.
William Peterson on
There have been many good comments to this topic, many of
which I agree with, but I'd like to add my (inflation
adjusted) two cents worth. While I am no longer a club
Treasurer, I was a Treasurer for many years and for several
clubs. Without a service similar to Bivio's it would have
been difficult and very time consuming to perform the
Treasurer's duties (which are onerous enough as it is).
Currently there are two such services available (Bivio and
BetterInvesting's Club Accounting). The two services are
comparable, but, in my opinion, Bivio is better (more
feature rich), easier to use, and less expensive. Someone
mentioned that BetterInvesting is a non-profit. This is
true, but BetterInvesting owns a for-profit subsidiary, and
it is that for-profit that maintains and sells the Club
Accounting service. If (God forbid) Bivio were to be sold to
some large company, that company might decide that Bivio
cannot be made profitable and then might discontinue the
service entirely. Clubs would then be forced to use the only
such service remaining. We all know what could happen if
such a monopoly were to result (much higher costs). If Bivio
were to become a non-profit, it might still find itself in
precarious financial condition. Simply becoming a non-profit
doesn't guarantee that Bivio would be able to improve its
financial situation. As a for-profit business, Bivio must
recognize a number of business-related conditions, including
inflation, a relative lack of competition, the prices
charged by its competition for similar services, the number
of potential and actual customers (clubs), and the
dedication that its customers have to the company and its
services. I believe that an analysis of these conditions
would justify a significant increase in the price of Bivio's
services, though perhaps not a doubling of the price. In
addition, at least one service that Bivio provides (tax
return preparation) should be unbundled (charged for
separately). This will allow clubs that do not file state
tax returns, for example, to keep their costs down. It will
also allow Bivio to increase its prices for tax return
preparation to properly account for the increased complexity
that the taxing authorities have introduced and continue to
introduce on a regular basis. Bivio might also consider
unbundling the automatic transaction downloading feature.
Some clubs do not need or use it, while others would be
loath to part with it (and might be willing to pay more to
continue having it). Finally, Bivio would be wise to make
any of these changes over a period of time to allow its
customers to adjust to the new situation and costs.
Robert Nagler on
Hi All,
I want to thank you all for the amazing show of support and advice!
For the few of you who seem concerned, Bivio is completely operational and solvent. We are just trying to figure out a long term plan that makes it work for everybody.
There have been many good comments to this topic, many of
which I agree with, but I'd like to add my (inflation
adjusted) two cents worth. While I am no longer a club
Treasurer, I was a Treasurer for many years and for several
clubs. Without a service similar to Bivio's it would have
been difficult and very time consuming to perform the
Treasurer's duties (which are onerous enough as it is).
Currently there are two such services available (Bivio and
BetterInvesting's Club Accounting). The two services are
comparable, but, in my opinion, Bivio is better (more
feature rich), easier to use, and less expensive. Someone
mentioned that BetterInvesting is a non-profit. This is
true, but BetterInvesting owns a for-profit subsidiary, and
it is that for-profit that maintains and sells the Club
Accounting service. If (God forbid) Bivio were to be sold to
some large company, that company might decide that Bivio
cannot be made profitable and then might discontinue the
service entirely. Clubs would then be forced to use the only
such service remaining. We all know what could happen if
such a monopoly were to result (much higher costs). If Bivio
were to become a non-profit, it might still find itself in
precarious financial condition. Simply becoming a non-profit
doesn't guarantee that Bivio would be able to improve its
financial situation. As a for-profit business, Bivio must
recognize a number of business-related conditions, including
inflation, a relative lack of competition, the prices
charged by its competition for similar services, the number
of potential and actual customers (clubs), and the
dedication that its customers have to the company and its
services. I believe that an analysis of these conditions
would justify a significant increase in the price of Bivio's
services, though perhaps not a doubling of the price. In
addition, at least one service that Bivio provides (tax
return preparation) should be unbundled (charged for
separately). This will allow clubs that do not file state
tax returns, for example, to keep their costs down. It will
also allow Bivio to increase its prices for tax return
preparation to properly account for the increased complexity
that the taxing authorities have introduced and continue to
introduce on a regular basis. Bivio might also consider
unbundling the automatic transaction downloading feature.
Some clubs do not need or use it, while others would be
loath to part with it (and might be willing to pay more to
continue having it). Finally, Bivio would be wise to make
any of these changes over a period of time to allow its
customers to adjust to the new situation and costs.
Steve Todd on
Whewww. Thatâs a relief.
Sent from my iPhone
> On Aug 3, 2022, at 5:52 PM, Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:
>
> 
> Hi All,
>
> I want to thank you all for the amazing show of support and advice!
>
> For the few of you who seem concerned, Bivio is completely operational and solvent. We are just trying to figure out a long term plan that makes it work for everybody.
>
> Thank you for using and supporting Bivio.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob
>